Security News > 2024 > June > AI and the Indian Election

Deepfakes were not the only manifestation of AI in the Indian elections.

Long before the election began, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a tightly packed crowd celebrating links between the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of India and the city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Indian political parties doubled down on online trolling, using AI to augment their ongoing meme wars.

Early in the election season, the Indian National Congress released a short clip to its 6 million followers on Instagram, taking the title track from a new Hindi music album named "Chor".

The Indian election's embrace of AI that began with entertainment, political meme wars, emotional appeals to people, resurrected politicians and persuasion through personalized phone calls to voters has opened a pathway for the role of AI in participatory democracy.

The Indian elections have shown a unique attempt at using AI for more individualized communication across linguistically and ethnically diverse constituencies, and making their messages more accessible, especially to rural, low-income populations.

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https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/ai-and-the-indian-election.html